Episode 47 · 29:18
Rate our business ideas
Dan and Tom rate a collection of pet-business ideas, beginning with deliberately ridiculous cat concepts and ending with practical services for busy owners.
The humour becomes a useful ideation method: exaggerate the premise, notice the real need underneath it, then decide whether the service should go to the customer or sit where customers already spend time.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- An absurd idea can uncover a perfectly sensible customer need.
- Convenience businesses win by fitting around an existing routine.
- Choose between mobile and fixed locations based on where customers naturally wait.
- Rate an idea on demand, delivery and repeat use—not only how entertaining the pitch sounds.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
Are you allowed to touch them like stroke them and stuff or is it more like a stripper Place only looking no touching it's EXT for touching no touching extra place if you want a one to one lap dance from a cat don't be a don't be a [Music] stop stop and welcome to another episode of don't be a door stop we have been incredibly busy I've been gigging so I've come out of my seven six or seven year retirement to start playing drums.
For Kim OT um she is my wife to begin with and also a music artist as we had our first gig on Wednesday and it went incredibly well I will drop in thanks Tom for reminding me I will drop in a video of me um at the gig now you may or may not be able to hear me I coming night my out of retirement game I've not done for the last seven [Music] years and hopefully from that video you.
Saw a little bit of what it's like to be um a drummer for Kima and it went swimmingly well which I'm pleased to announce no technical hitches um no musical glitches which is good and then the next one is uh Friday playing in EXA and then next Thursday playing in rexam so if you're in exitor or rexam come watch us play exciting where did you play your first gig where was that Bas was in a pub in sh ditch and the venue.
Was pretty good to be honest like Pub venues are always hit and miss with sound stuff but it was a good venue good good uh good atmosphere to it it's in like a top floor of this Pub so the pub is at the bottom floor then you have to walk all the way through uh and then the second floor is where the gigs are and then the third floor which is like the roof um or like the the highest floor.
Even is like the green room but there's also a pub there so I wonder on like Saturdays or something whether or not they have the whole three tiers of it like full but yeah it's a cool little Pub and shortage can't remember the name of it anly so your tour dates on the screen each week sold out or like credits SP or whatever it it it reminds me of like you know when when you do something new you want to do something.
Like um you know how somebody takes a photo of themselves every day and then you collate it into this thing and then this video plays through like 30 years with the phot I was like what I should have done and I thought about this but then I didn't execute on it was like you know when you like take a a video of yourself looking back and behind me is the crowd and I'd be like gig number one and like a second video and then keep on.
Doing that so basically as the gigs go that it it would be like the stages are changing they're getting bigger like crowds triod behind you looking at the stage in front of you you saying yeah and I would look towards the camera exactly like this setup here you would see basically the crowd in the background me on my drum kit on my drum kit here and I'd be like gig number one and then it's like then you basically.
Would just have that snipped to then gig 1000 essentially because that's what it is it's all about I was thinking if we have a um drumming Vlog of you with I've seen these little cameras that you could basically the slightly magnetic that you can pin to your top and have basically the magnet behind your top I was wondering to have that of just seeing you drum as a um what would it be like a first person drummer type of thing GoPro.
Type thing yeah for them to feel like they're part of the drumming experience yeah bring that to Future yeah I I think it' be cool to to see that cuz I guess what's cool to me might not be cool to others but then what's cool to others might not cool be cool to me so I'm like oh well there's nothing there's nothing special but it might be special for somebody else that's never been in that situation and see what it's like and.
What what do I see and all and what's what am I looking at and what's going on um I guess if I had a GoPro on my head you'd be able to see exactly what I'm also looking at rather just on my chest is moving around like as I'm drumming but yeah that'll be one for a future future iteration um for sure for definitely that' be cool but yeah hopefully I'll be videography the rexon one see watch watch this space I need to ask.
If uh I need to ask if I can get um freebi um freebie tickets for a couple of people to come in including yourself so um and if not sponsor me to go yeah sponsor you to be all all sneaky in in one of those roller cases with all my Dr stuff come yeah exactly sorry I'm just trying to find my notes cuz I wanted to specifically discuss something funny well not actually done the thing that I wanted to.
Do to kick us off but was just roll the camera R straight in we just like charged jump straight into it Absol I was going to ask you to try out the um teleprompter on Riverside to see what that would be like oh yeah I've not had the chance to play with any of this new stuff haven't they got some like green screen thing as well was that what you were going to do there is that but that.
Doesn't work with my laptop without it crashing oh that's a shame malfunctioning it works with the iPad but not with a laptop which I tend to use the laptop in the camera and it literally just stop pauses and then I turn it off and then it'll like run through everything that I was doing earlier so yours might be a little bit more powerful as you've got the M1 chip but I don't yet so uh yeah I have the M1 Pro actually yeah yeah so it.
Might be I'm assuming it's that because internet speeds are quite good where I am so who knows watch this yeah I'll have to give it a go but the one thing I wanted this is a green screen this is a real window yeah this is real outside yeah um one thing I wanted to talk about is I've started to spot a trend around animal-based businesses so you may be familiar with cat cafes it's a new trend craze that's.
That's probably been going for a while but I've only just gotten into it because uh um both sides are sister-in-law and sister and brother-in-law have cats so we've like I've spotted them more and they're more like in our family chats right there's a place in London basically you can rent or like not rent but like pay to be with a cat or pay to be with a kitten for an amount of time so for 55 minutes with a.
Cat it's $1 19.99 and for 55 minutes with a kitten it's $24.99 and then they have 1 hour 24 H sorry 1 hour 25 28 35 and then 1 hour 55 which is basically 2 hours with a cat 40 quid and then kitten 46 quid or 47 quid rounding up roughly I'll ping the thing so that's per person so I'm like that is just to spend cat yeah just to spend time with a cat now obviously this is London prices so.
They're going to be more expensive but you're also going to be buying cake and drinks and whatever whatever so I was like what other cat businesses cat or animal business ideas are you allow to touch them like stroke them and stuff or is it more like a stripper place that only looking no touching it's extra for touching no touching extra price if you want a one to one lap dance from a cat that that can be business number one so in the.
Comments I want once we've like riffed off these business ideas I want you to like tell us which is the funniest idea or which is the best idea maybe funniest and best is like two separate things but like the best idea that we've come up with you can decide whether or not it's best because it's funny or whatever yeah so first idea stri a cat strip cats which essentially extra that would be that would make more sense right you.
Would have some sort of like what what it would be you know in like um what do they call it when they have those little meals that come around on a on like a conveyor belt uh it's like a Japanese style thing like a sushi restaurant Right comes around on a conveyor belt so what that allows is multiple people to sit at different points right so what happens if you have not a conveyor belt as such but like a tube where cats.
Basically will come down down the tube and then you can have different tables along the tube and then you just play music and if you want the cat to basically like come out onto the table or whatever you have to pray play pre pray play no pay pay extra play pre or pay extra um for the cat to like stop at your point to come out onto the table so you can stroke it or whatever then it has to go back into the conveyor belt or.
Whatever and they danc some music so it's kind of like yeah so what would be the name of the restaurant or the either a restaurant or um or a cafe CFE cat strips no cat strips don't know cat strippers no yeah what did you say before cat strippers was that it yeah yeah stripper cats I'm trying to think of something fun yeah stripper cats that's stripper cats because that sounds like are you going to stripper cats rather than are you.
Going to cat strippers yeah stripper cats sounds a bit more like flowy right stripper cats what I also thought if somebody wants to start these businesses we will give you a logo for free or a website for free because we want to be we'll take your commission for free yeah and therefore we'll take 10% of all bookings so stripper cats is idea number one what I thought would be even better than stripper cats because unfortunately you'd have to be there in person right.
Let's take this into into the internet ether world into the website into of like video streaming yeah um and I what would be cool is you have a room where there is a cat right and um we'll call it cat cams that's a great name cat cams and it would be that you could release things by tipping so for example you have a cat in a room and it's jumping about and stuff and you can watch it it.
Reminds me because somebody in North Wales at some point or some I can't remember if it was North Wales I think it was Wales they had like a goat cam where they were watching goats or watching like sheep or whatever and people would tune in I think it was somewhere and that was like like weirdly like cool so do that with a cat in a room and if you could partner with cies then that'd be even better right so.
We're looking after a cat it's in a room and you could release like things and Trigger things so for example you could like pay 20 quid and dance music and flashing lights come on and the cat be like like running around so obviously we'd have to be careful not for it to be too crazy but you could be like release a treat or release a toy and that would be a way that the person person watching would be able to tip um for the cat to.
Be like doing stuff or like having fun or like unlock a new room and then and then it goes into another room and then the camera switches to the other room or whatever so I think that would be a great idea make a lot of money it's not very ethical but I'll show it anyway is if you had positive things and negative things and you'd have them have a war so imagine if like the floor becomes water and then slowly built like you can pay.
For more water to go into the floor because it doesn't like water but then you got other people to have pay to release the water and then just see who wins but yeah that's that's the N that's an absolute non-ethical idea so we don't we don't back this idea but let's play it out just for idea's sake we're not going to do this stuff and if you did choose this idea we wouldn't do the website for you yeah every hour.
There is a battle for like red and green and you basically have to pay money and then whichever one beats in the like the tug of war of like bars of how many people have donated that's what gets executed in the next hour or whatever or you could change it to be that's probably the right definitely the Cat shut us down so basically it's going to be like whoever wins the dark or light oh it to be honest it doesn't need to be dark or.
Light it could be just like two ideas one is we're g to play dance music like thingy bob what was it ready steady cook style yeah yeah exactly you're just voting on what you'd prefer to see so then there is some sort of user engagement and then you could pay like extra extra extra money to kind of like have your thing done or or whatever like above the two voters or or whatever right to be like bypass the queue as it.
Were that would be a great thing I I was also thinking like you know um a purchaser of the month is allowed to dress up as a cat and go into the room yeah yeah you you could have people pay to be in the room or whatever wherever as well right like could pay to to be in there but I think that would be a great idea because it' be super easy you just have a cat in there you'd have like a.
Live stream and then you would have people like paying money and then you just have to have stuff I wonder if there's some way of like based on these triggers that it would activate certain activities or certain gifts or certain things or like a laser would turn on and then the cat would follow the laser around whatever the only trouble is that essentially you'd have to have it timed where like maybe you have two cats one in a different time zone so you could.
Have 24-hour cats actually that's another good name 24-hour cats where you'd have one cat that's like playing around stuffff and then that cat would be allowed to sleep and then you have the other cat in some other time like watching Big Brother when they were sleeping I don't know some people might like that so maybe there's a button that you can flick in between just a 24-hour cat that does sleep but then a 24hour awake cat so then it flicks in between the time zones.
Yeah which would essentially be a different cat in another room because obviously it'd be too hard for to keep one cat awake and stimulated for so many hours but I I I thinking exactly the same and then people don't yeah actually you could you could duplicate the rooms right you could have exactly the same room like Mr be stick kind of like this is room a and room B and they're exactly the same and you'd have the same setup.
In both rooms you're just switching like on the 12h hour mark So then the cat doesn't get too tired yeah you'd run like adverts for like whiskers or whatever like cat it's basically like I was thinkings I was thinking this is my business idea but it's sort of the same thing and it's like aive Tamagotchi but I guess it sort of is isn't it yeah in the sense that you have to feed it and drink it or whatever but I guess it's.
More of a a community Tamagotchi rather than an individual one a factory if you wanted everyone to have an individual one but why not if you if you think about it I want to have a cat but I don't so I I I don't want to have cat but let's say these aren free range cats then if they have any eggs person yeah yeah like they basically are a cat that lives in a caty and you own that cat and you can be with the cat at.
Any point but predominantly it's a cat Tamagotchi based cat essentially right so you might be like traveling loads but you want a cat and you want to be able to feed it stuff and obviously it would naturally feed it because it's like a it's basically cat subscription that there is a website somewhere where you can rent a dog so this would essentially be rent a cat so you would purchase like maybe you'd purchase like a month of a.
Cat where you could kind of like speak to it through a microphone and like feed it stuff and then you could also turn up and see it at certain like visiting hours or whatever but yeah yeah obviously it'd be difficult essentially you would want to make sure it's a free range cat and not be stuck in an indoor thing but yeah and another thing I think is a good like animal-based business is literally a caty because you could have.
Two things so one you could literally do um you obviously look after a bunch of cats and you feed them and they play around and whatever and you have them in cages for when they sleep and all that stuff so they don't fight all the stuff right so you just need a bunch of space you could do it in a like in like a garage in a garden or whatever whatever right um then if you own the caty you.
Could potentially live stream the caty and the cats that are in the caty so long as somebody doesn't like come and Rob the caty right and steal the cats kind of vibe but you could have like a secondary thing and you probably have to ask permission of the people that give you cats to like allow them to be streamed like permission for them to be streamed so yeah cat caty so we so so far we've got cat cams stripper cats stripper cats cat.
Caty um what other ideas what other anal we've zoned in on cats but yeah any I've seen um like a house sitting but I guess you can include animals with that so if we're keeping on the theme of cat so it's cat setting so in instead of taking your cat to the C cat you might actually want them to stay at home so then actually you bring the person to the home because actually it could be like a.
Good holiday for someone that let's say a student that doesn't have that much money or someone that can't afford to go on holiday but wants a bit of a break but something a bit different someone without a cat might actually want to house sit a cat or work from another home you know what's cool with that so I chatted to with cats maybe that should be the phrase yeah um I was trying to think of a like remote work cat like.
Cat cat sitting remote no that sounds bad instead of we cat we work it be we cat we cat throw loads of cats in there yeah teing up the place yeah you can tell we're good at making screaming cat noises or yeah I feel like it's very homo Simpson definitely is yeah or like the s or Not The Simpsons The Muppets as well kind of like similar kind of sounds that kind of Blends in with so some friends of ours have had a baby the.
Baby's now one year old they had an idea around like basically you need to have an one-year-old had an idea that's impressive yeah genius kid for sure um have an app to explain the routine of the child so for example like routine of the child they get up at 7:00 a.m. they want this kind of food they like they sleep at 6:00 a.m. or whatever so whenever you kind of have somebody to like babysit this is the routine so like stick to.
This routine right um similar with cats why don't we have like a cat sitting app where it be like hey this cat can't be within five meters of this cat because it'll fight it likes this kind of food it likes this and if it you know goes to the toilet it always wants you to clean it straight away like blah blah blah all the nuances of like the cat character I wonder if it could be like an apple.
Wallet card type of thing that you get more information so then you can just hand it over some like aird Drop it or something it's kind of like your contact card yeah or like your um I'm blood type A or whatever whatever yeah yeah so we have the cat calling card which would be a a blend of like a cat app actually the cat app could be separate and then we have like ab and beef cats essentially you go and stay.
Over at people's places you have this cat app which helps you like understand how to look after to the cat and then you stay in other people's house or you work remotely from that place I I think another one with the um sitting walking is another thing a colleague of mine has um or like a client um pays for her dog to be walked while she remote works so the guy comes at like 9:00 a.m. in the morning picks the dog up and then for.
Like 4 hours or whatever has the dog for four hours like walks at whatever and then comes like or three hours or something something and they do it with multiple dogs so I'm like you could have like a dog walking because cat walking is not really a thing is it so a dog walking business would be like simple we in you just find people that would have dogs and be like hey I can walk the dog for you so you can like remote work.
Whatever you just pick all these dogs up at a certain time and you would do it like if you were retired and you had the time and you did like you loved walking anyway and you loved walking in your area you just like pick up the dogs across a particular Road and then walk them a couple hours and then bring them back drop them all off and be like done like 20 quid an hour or whatever for each dog like I.
Guess going over dogs walking them they might get dirty so then you go into grooming yeah I think and massaging or whatever when when you think of the like if you think about covid and the things that we've like put spent money on right or the Baseline things like we all need food we all need energy and we all need like Transportation right or like Logistics and then the other thing is like we all will spend money on our.
Animals more than ourselves so even though we humans need these things like you'll also spend money on your pets so if you have like a pet grooming place there's actually place that um opened up in col Bay and I I I would love to think that the cash flow of those kind of places is like it's a great brick and mortar building uh great brick and mortar business to do like dog grooming because I assume that dogs typically.
Need haircuts right and they probably need to be washed and that whole experience and they probably need to have their teeth cleaned and their nails uh their like claws chopped every now and again so you could have that service right um and then you put some like nice smelly tag on them right like one of those Christmas tree things like once you've washed the car so um I I think that would be a great business but it'd be fullon because it' be using lots of.
Water essentially and obviously electricity for the haird dryers but I saw someone in um there's a place in sort of near hollywell Direction called abacan abacan whatever yeah and they basically have in their um they've started to have um basically containers like shipping container businesses and one of them is a dog groom in place which I thought was quite clever because normally dogs are smaller than hum so it's easier to have like a mini bath and a hair dryer and.
This on the other so it's a quite sort of a garage size if if not slightly smaller it's quite handy to have that um yeah it's good to know that you can fit it in a small area basically yeah I I think with any of these things you want to like come out with the one that's going to take the less effort the dog grooming thing lots of effort because you'd have to create a place where it's like waterproof you'd.
Be able to drive them You' be able to like store animals until the owners come and pick them up and also it's like Barbers like The Barbers is never booked out right there's always like down times you could be like um have it on Wheels couldn't you I guess oh like in a back of a van yeah yeah yeah yeah lock them in the van and drive off but you bring in the especially if someone has a small.
Wind let's say you're working from home and you don't want to take your animal somewhere you can get them to come to you sort of thinking about how you can have valets that come to then clean your car where you're at and then go is mimicking that same idea that if you had yeah basically like a camper van that you come you clean the animal and then you drop it off and then you go or if they want to walk then you can walk it.
Around the block or whatever and add things to it as as your business grows I guess you you either go to people or you be in a place where lots of people are for a prolonged time for example if you in a shopping center it would make a lot of sense right you go and do your shopping and you drop off your dog and then I'll the dog will be with us for like half an an hour while you do your.
Shopping and then you come back and your dog it'll be like pristine clean with a nice smelly Christmas tree hung around its neck kind of thing you know it'd be that like Blended experiences so it's not an inconvenience and it's like a part of the life or the kind of like the experiences that you already um guess if you know if there was a park that's quite known for dog walkers you could set up in one corner let's say per week.
A month or whatever and then after they've done their walk they might be like actually it's a good day to clean because you got on the walk and I'll actually that would probably be even better if you did like if you did it a part of the um like National Trust thing right you have this long Forest walk and you have a c Cafe with like a dog grooming thing so you like come into the cafe be like cool we're going to do this.
Walk so you do the walk you get super muddy and then you come to the cafe you put the dog in the like cleaning place clean up your dog for half an hour you have a cup of tea and then here you go your dog's clean you don't have to worry about it you can now go on your way so yeah like Blended experiences is like the best approach to get you sell the experience of cleaning a dog to someone.
That doesn't have a dog that wants to do it yes I was chatting to some guy outside of a pub once and he was like oh I'm visit he's from the states he's visiting London and randomly he said like um I asked him like oh if you could do anything like if everything paid the same what would you do and he'd be like I'd love to be like a zookeeper or whatever or like be with animals or something like that right and I was like.
Did you know you can actually literally be a zookeeper for the day in the in the zoo in London and he's like really I was like yeah you can like I definitely have heard of that you should see if it's still around definitely you would bring like be a do dog groomer for the day so you'd get people to pay to wash these dogs as the experience definitely like that would be such a clever thing so then you actually just be the middleman.
And and you don't have to watch the dogs because you kind of like be a dog creamer for the day and the people are bring in the dogs cuz they're naturally going on walks a great a great way to do it I think so right any any other final ideas I'm trying to think of like additional ones to like extra things I don't know I think that's currently pretty much it I'm sure something else will crop up and.
Obviously the traditional Cat Cafe still works but I wanted to come up with add additional ones outside of that I I I do um I don't think I've ever mentioned my cat quiz though so I again knowing the doing this like research of knowing that people spend money on their cats I wanted to trial something so one there's an Insight around quizzes regardless of the length of your quiz as soon as somebody's done like the three first questions there's like an 80 90% chance.
That they will complete it regardless of how long the quiz is because like after they've gone past that first hurdle they're so invested that they'll go to the very end so I wanted to trial that out and I thought like I'm into like personality traits and stuff we've spoken about it a lot on the on the podcast and I was like what if you could blend cat um breeds with personalities and it was around the time that like.
Chat GPT was kind of new so I was like Hey chat GPT can you create a cat quiz which blends personalities and cat um breeds so you fill out this like personality questionnaire and it'll tell you what cat breed you are and then I was going to use Amazon referral links to buy like cat food and stuff and and then you could pay to like make yourself look like the cat breed that you just did now I didn't get anybody pay to look.
Like a cat and I don't think I actually even got any links through and I just did Facebook advertising got loads of people on it got loads of people finishing the quiz so my insight of like people finish the quiz they did they would spend three minutes on this like quiz to get the answer because they were interested and I didn't do the whole like put your email in to get the answer I didn't want to do any of that stuff I.
Just wanted to see if they'd buy stff but they didn't buy stuff which is a shame but that audience on Facebook is super cheap because you essentially just Target like it was targeting loads of people in the kind of like 50s 60s 7s group like was really really cheap to Target for like cat lovers so I'm like I've not quite got my like the the conversion of like turn yourself into a cat but I think also that would be a.
Good it's kind of like a filter right you'd create like a paid filter to turn yourself into C which I know those exist um so yeah that's something else that I tried and it didn't quite work but um it's a great way to get traffic that's for sure cheap traffic there you go cats cats cats what more do you want yeah in in the comments tell us which cat idea was the best and share your cut ideas of um if.
You have something that's additional to as and until next time keep I was trying to think of a cat thing I couldn't just think quick enough keep claing away I don't know keep claing those paws cloring those doors and don't be a keep cloring those doors by for now [Music].